Behind the Chalet School and The Chalet Companion

After I wrote about Girls Gone By Publishing last week, Geraldine reminded me about the wonderful Bettany Press who "specialise in books for fans of British girls fiction". They have a number of Chalet School related titles (unsurprisingly given the name, which comes from the maiden name of the two key characters responsible for setting up the school in the series), both fill-ins and non fiction. It was the non fiction which caught my eye, and I promptly went off to Amazon to seek out Behind the Chalet School and The Chalet companion, both by Helen McClelland, probably the great Chalet School expert. I have read both of these titles before, a long time ago, and am now glad to have my own copies.




The Chalet Companion is a collection of articles that includes information about the locations of the books, the history of the school and the development of the fan movement as well as biographical information about Brent-Dyer and a couple of short stories. As you can see from my picture, I decided that I would rather have the original Armada edition to complement my Armada Chalet School books rather than the Bettany Press edition.

Behind the Chalet School, is a fantastic biography of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, the writer of the Chalet School series. It goes beyond the biographical information in the Chalet Companion to give a fuller picture of her life; very little was known about the author until McClelland did this research. This is the second edition of the book and includes a chapter about the growth of the Chalet School legend.

Both of these were wonderful to dip into when they arrived, and I look forward to having time to re-read them properly, as well as re-reading more of my Chalet School books.